


Close Encounters of the Second Kind

by MaCall (misterpointy)



Series: Shock Value [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Canon Lesbian Character, Chance Meetings, F/F, First Time, Girls Kissing, Implied Sexual Content, POV Female Character, POV Third Person Plural, Pre-Canon, Present Tense, Wordcount: Over 1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 17:52:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9560309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misterpointy/pseuds/MaCall
Summary: “With a close encounter of the second kind, the physical proximity of the event would certainly tend to make the experience vivid and unforgettable.”—J. Allen Hynek,The UFO Experience: A Scientific EnquiryIn which Nyssa is sent to assassinate someone in National City. After her target is eliminated, she meets Alex at the hotel bar, and takes the special agent upstairs.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheRedshirtWhoLived](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRedshirtWhoLived/gifts).



> **Warning** : Nyssa is explicitly portrayed as a Holocaust survivor here. I don’t go into detail about it, but I do mention that her mother died in a death camp and that she totally hunted and killed Nazis. Beware.
> 
> (1) Set in the space between _Arrow_ 2x01 (“City of Heroes”) and 2x13 (“Heir to the Demon”). Pre-canon for _Supergirl_ , about a year before Kara makes her heroic debut. AU because _Supergirl_ isn’t happening in a parallel universe separate from the rest of the Arrowverse. Technically part of the _Shock Value_ series because I plan on referencing Nyssa/Alex having a thing in that fic later on, but could be read as a standalone.
> 
> (2) Title and subheadings are scrumped from _The UFO Experience: A Scientific Enquiry_ by J. Allen Hynek.

**Even the clumsiest fate is perfectly shaped,**  
**so the view took over looking**  
**but the sweetest thing I’ve ever known**  
**is obscene with a beautiful**  
**sugar rotted down to its truth.**

Brenda Shaughnessy, “Embarrassment”

* * *

_Close Encounters of the Second Kind_

* * *

“Something must change.”

Nyssa Raatko  
_Batgirl_ Vol.1, No.67 (“Destruction’s Daughter, Part 2: Bird Calls”)  
October, 2005

* * *

**1**  
Daylight Discs

* * *

Nyssa is sent to National City to assassinate a corrupt politician. Of course the contract was paid for by another similarly corrupt politician, but moral gray areas have always been safe spaces for her.

It’s simple to covertly kill a man in a room crawling with people in the middle of the day and walk out with no one the wiser. After all, Nyssa has been doing this since she was a child. First kill at age six, in the death camp at Sobibór where her mother died in 1943, before her father took her in.[1]First assassination at age eight: Richard Thomalla, the _SS-Hauptsturmführer_ who supervised the construction of three death camps in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1942. [2]

Nyssa has taken hundreds of lives in the decades that have passed since the uprising at Sobibór, since the end of the war, since she hunted down the men who killed her mother for being Mizrahim.[3]It never bothered her, not until she began to see what being a killer was doing to her beloved. Sara was the light of her life before she broke her oath and left the League. When the light goes out, what is left behind?

Only darkness.

* * *

**2**  
First Contact

* * *

Alex spends her nights thinking about everyone but herself: Kara, her mother, her father, their dense cousin Ray with his four Ph.D.s and his nanotech startup in Silicon Valley that he turned into a multibillion dollar company, and their other cousin Syd with his bad coping mechanisms and his melodramatic attention-seeking.

Of course she doesn’t let herself think about Superman in Metropolis, saving the day and living his life while Kara is aching for a connection to the homeworld she lost.

Alex thinks about telling Kara everything about the D. E. O., about the Kryptonians who broke out of the prison that crashed in Nevada a few miles from where Clark found her escape pod thirteen years ago, about how hopelessly overwhelmed she sometimes feels for no apparent reason.

Only she doesn’t.

Instead she goes to a bar at a hotel, one where no one knows her, to people-watch and have a glass of wine. While it’s not exactly her idea of a fun night out, it’s better than sitting at home alone in her apartment watching Netflix or Kara smiling at her like a ray of sunshine and asking questions she can’t answer truthfully while they eat pizza and potstickers for dinner.

Kara wants the world to be as straightforward as possible. Alex is starting to feel the pressure of lying to her sister like an invisible film clinging to her skin, icky and suffocating.

When she looks over her shoulder, she sees the bartender put a glass of Pinot Noir in front of her. Alex narrows her eyes at the woman behind the bar and tilts her head at the drink. “I didn’t order this,” she says.

“No,” a husky female voice says, “I did.”

Alex blinks at the gorgeous black-haired, brown-skinned woman as she folds herself into one of the seats next to her.

Nyssa smooths the skirt of her sleek black dress out before she takes a sip of Pinot Noir.

Alex notices the shade of her lipstick matches the dark red wine and is mortified to admit that she’s blushing. “Hi,” she says. “I’m Alex.”

Nyssa smiles. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Alex,” she says.

* * *

**3**  
Nocturnal Lights

* * *

“I’m not gay,” Alex blurts out later once they’re upstairs in one of the nicer suites, her voice pitching awkwardly higher as Nyssa kisses her neck. “I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with being gay, but I’m…I’m not.”

Nyssa hums softly and nips at the delicate skin of Alex’s throat, soothing the harshness of her teeth with a slow flick of her tongue. Alex shivers and exhales in a desperate shudder. Nyssa smiles and pulls back to look her in the eyes; they’re brown, with irises flecked with green and gold and pupils blown wide and dark.

“Do you want me to stop?” she asks.

Alex sucks in a sharp breath and shakes her head. “No,” she whispers. “Don’t stop. Don’t you dare.”

Nyssa smiles wider before she lightly kisses her on the lips. Alex kisses her back almost shyly at first, moaning softly into her mouth, tentative fingertips stroking the nape of her neck. Nyssa puts her hands all over her: tangling in her hair, mapping the soft curve of her waist, squeezing her hips, pressing into the divots below her shoulder blades and at the base of her spine.

Alex makes a frustrated noise in the back of her throat as Nyssa skims her thumbs over the undersides of her breasts and yanks at the zipper on the back of her dress, her breath hitching as she bumps into the edge of the mattress. Nyssa peels the wide straps of her sleek black dress over her shoulders and grins before she sinks onto her knees in one smooth movement. Alex doesn’t know how rare it is to see this woman put herself in a vulnerable position, to see a daughter of Ra’s al Ghul willingly submit to anyone, but it takes her breath away.

Nyssa arches one eyebrow at her like a challenge and reaches behind her back to unhook her own bra. Alex has never been one to let a challenge go unaccepted.

It’s her first time, and their last, but Alex doesn’t mind.

After all, some endings are beginnings.

* * *

**THE END**

* * *

[1] Nyssa is a Holocaust survivor in the comics. This is made explicit in the _Batman: Death and the Maidens_ story arc that ran in 2003. I’m ignoring the flashback in _Arrow_ 3x12 (“Uprising”) 4 February 2015, wherein Nyssa is a child when Malcolm first visits Nanda Parbat in 1993.

[2] Richard Thomalla was an actual Nazi who died in 1945, executed by the Soviet police in the Czech Republic when it was still Czechoslovakia; but for the purposes of this fic, Nyssa killed him instead.

[3] Mizrahim (מזרחים) or Mashriqiyyun (المشرقيون) are Middle Eastern Jews. Nyssa uses the Hebrew word instead of the Arabic one because in this story, she is her mother’s daughter as well as her father’s.


End file.
